Inside the USS New Jersey: Fastest, Longest, Most Decorated Battleship

The 45,000-ton ship cost around $150 million to build in the 1940s, or around $2 billion in 2025 when adjusted for inflation.

Reagan was the first sitting president to commission a battleship.

After serving in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, it was decommissioned for the final time in 1991. The ship opened to the public as a museum in 2001.

The museum, operated by Battleship New Jersey, offers daily self-guided and guided tours. Self-guided tours for adults cost $30, while guided tours cost $40. Tickets can be purchased through Battleship New Jersey.

The USS New Jersey’s shore bombardment capabilities made it irreplaceable from World War II through the 1980s.

“Even though aircraft carriers rendered battleships obsolete nominally in World War II, in the ’50s, they bring the ship back. In the ’60s, they bring the ship back. In the ’80s, they bring the ship back. Because to this day, we haven’t developed a platform that can cheaply provide that shore bombardment,” Szimanski said.

“Pull the trigger on that,” Szimanski said, pointing to a M2 Browning machine gun on the deck.

Far be it from me to disobey a direct order. I squeezed the trigger, unleashing the sound effect of firing 485 to 635 rounds per minute.

This particular gun was a replica, but visitors to the USS New Jersey can fire blanks from its 5-inch or 40mm saluting guns upon making a donation to the museum.

During the Korean War in 1951, Oesterwind was fatally wounded by shrapnel from a North Korean shell while attacking a North Korean transportation hub. Though the shell didn’t break through the ship’s armor, three other sailors were wounded, and parts of the ship sustained superficial damage.

The green line serves as the introductory tour, bringing visitors through crew members’ bunks, the officers’ wardroom, the captain’s cabin, and museum exhibit spaces.

The red line focuses on weapons and navigation, with stops like the combat engagement center and missile deck.

The yellow line features an inside look at the crew’s life on board, highlighting the library, barber shop, and laundry facilities.

Finally, the blue line tour, titled “Into the Citadel,” includes the engine rooms, a 16-inch turret barbette, and the World War II-era radio room.

Szimanski guided me through a combination of these routes for a broader look at the ship, but if you do all four as they’re laid out, it’s 1 ½ miles long and covers 200 of the ship’s 1,600 rooms.

The USS New Jersey was designed to hold 2,000 crew members, but during War War II, there were 2,700 sailors on board. When there weren’t enough bunks, sailors slept in hammocks.

By the end of the ship’s career, the crew was down to around 1,600.

The crew members who slept in communal spaces like this were often lower-ranking sailors who were newer to the Navy, such as the gunner’s mates who operated the ship’s 16-inch guns.

Around 3,000 former crew members have visited the museum since it opened in 2001, Szimanski said.

Officers were seated by rank and only began eating once the executive officer, or XO, gave the signal.

Unlike enlisted crew members, officers paid for all of their meals.

Reason was the first Black four-star admiral in the US Navy. From 1989 to 1990, he commanded Battle Group Romeo, of which the USS New Jersey was the flagship, in the Persian Gulf.

Reason told the museum that he read classified information at a desk in his bedroom, but otherwise spent most of his time working at a larger desk in the stateroom.

The desk in the USS New Jersey’s stateroom was taken from another 1980s-era ship at the Navy Yard.

The spacious room was meant to impress foreign leaders … and intimidate them.

“It’s very specifically placed right here so that when dignitaries come across the gangway, they have to walk past the gun turrets to get here,” Szimanski said.

Another third of the silver service is on display at the New Jersey governor’s mansion in Princeton, while the remaining third’s whereabouts are unknown.

The Combat Engagement Center, or CEC, was added to the USS New Jersey when the ship was recommissioned in the 1980s. It featured more modern equipment such as the Tomahawk Weapons System for launching Tomahawk missiles, and sensors including Air Search and Surface Search radars.

Volunteers worked to make the CEC as realistic as possible with screens showing mock-ups of how the computers functioned. Much of this equipment is still used on modern Navy ships.

“We haven’t figured out with 100% certainty that we carried nuclear weapons, but we were certainly nuclear-capable,” Szimanski said.

About two years ago, a new staff member was cleaning out a predecessor’s office and found a box of keys. Upon closer examination, the museum realized the keys had brass tags that read “nuclear PTF,” which stands for “permission to fire.”

When museum staffers tested the keys in the “nuclear perm to fire” lock in the combat engagement center, they fit inside.

“The Navy just left the original keys on board, the museum had them, and we didn’t know we had them for over 20 years,” Szimanski said.

A ladder leads from the admiral’s state room up to the admiral’s bridge for easy access. The four chairs in this space were reserved exclusively for the use of admirals.

A New Jersey native, Halsey chose the USS New Jersey to be his flagship. He commanded the Navy’s 3rd Fleet in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, the largest naval battle of World War II and believed by many to be the largest naval battle in history.

Only four officers have ever been promoted to five-star fleet admiral in the history of the Navy. Since Halsey held the title, no other officer has been promoted to that level.

The conning tower’s armor was over 17 inches thick, the thickest single piece of armor plate on the entire ship.

The helm, which steered the ship, was located inside the conning tower. The captain could also communicate with crew members in the engine room about the ship’s speed.

If the conning tower was damaged or destroyed during battle, there were three other places on board where the ship could be steered from. Contingencies upon contingencies were crucial.

“That’s the real genius of this ship, the level of redundancy that they built in,” Szimanski said. “Okay, you might be able to shoot through this and knock that out, but we’ve got four backups or six backups. We’ve found one system so far that has at least 46 different backups.”

The USS New Jersey measures 11 stories high.

Visible across the Delaware River, the Independence Seaport Museum houses two more historic vessels: the USS Olympia, the oldest steep warship still afloat in the world, and the USS Becuna, a World War II Balao-class submarine.

The museum offers special 90-minute in-depth tours of Turret II, spanning five stories.

The Mark 8 Rangekeeper could calculate where a target would be when the projectile arrived while accounting for factors such as the Earth’s rotation, known as the Coriolis effect.

The USS New Jersey has the last Mark 8 Rangekeeper in the world that still works.

“My favorite thing about the computer is in the 1980s, they looked at replacing it with a modern digital computer and they chose not to,” Szimanski said. “The modern computer was as accurate, but it wasn’t more accurate, so why waste the money? Plus, if we lose power because we’ve been hit by the enemy, the modern computer dies. This one has a hand crank as a backup. You just pick the lowest-ranking sailor in the room.”

A screen also showed video footage of the guns firing, making it feel even more realistic.

The hallway featured equipment such as oxygen breathing apparatuses and doors leading to fire rooms and engine rooms.

In the fire room, crew members controlled how much fuel was being pumped into the burners by changing the fuel nozzles. This was done every four hours or every time the ship changed speed.

The Navy added air conditioning to the rest of the ship in the 1980s, but there was no point in trying to cool off the boiler room, which could reach temperatures of 120 degrees.

If a torpedo from an enemy ship penetrated the ship’s multiple layers of steel — three layers on the bottom and five on the sides — crew members in the fire room could make a quick escape via this four-story ladder.

With a top speed of 35.2 knots, or a little over 40 miles per hour, the USS New Jersey still holds the record for the fastest battleship anywhere in the world because the Navy never built another class of battleship after the Iowa class.

“We are not allowed to run our radar, because if we did, all of the cable TV within 50 miles would go out,” Szimanski said.

Enlisted crew members were served in buffet-style lines on metal trays, unlike officers who ate on china and silver.

Enlisted crew members could choose between the meal of the day, which would have been entrees like ginger pot roast or steak and lobster, or fast-food-style items such as pizza, hot dogs, and cheeseburgers, which were always available.

They had around 12 minutes to eat their meals. Since the crew was so large, they ate in at least three shifts.

The USS New Jersey usually had two chaplains on board — one Protestant and one Catholic — but the chapel was a non-denominational space that held worship services for other faiths, as well.

The library held around 6,000 books.

Male crew members’ hair was not allowed to be any longer than 3 inches.

The ship’s washing machines could wash 100 pounds of uniforms per load, and the dryers held 50 pounds each.

The steam presses used auxiliary steam from the ship’s boilers to iron uniforms.

The USS New Jersey carried different aircraft throughout its years of service.

During World War II, it deployed Kingfisher and Seahawk seaplanes to monitor the aim of the 16-inch guns. Helicopters replaced seaplanes in the Korean War, when a Sikorsky HO3S-1 Dragonfly helicopter known as the “Jersey Bounce” assisted with search-and-rescue missions. In the 1980s, the Seasprite helicopter was used to detect submarines and deliver supplies.

Why did the Navy phase out battleships? Szimanski said the answer was simple: Battleships have large-caliber guns and thick armor, but neither can withstand missiles.

However, President Donald Trump has expressed interest in bringing battleships back. At the September all-hands meeting called by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth featuring 800 military leaders, Trump said that he’d spoken to Navy Secretary John Phelan and that it’s “something we’re seriously considering.”

“Some people would say, ‘No, that’s old technology.’ I don’t know. I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns,” Trump said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Navy referred Business Insider to the Office of the Secretary of War, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Destroyers are equipped with high-range guns and missiles. Long-range strikes are carried out by aircraft carriers. And submarines have filled the role of anti-surface warships. However, there’s no vessel that can execute shore bombardment as effectively and efficiently as battleships did with their large artillery.

That’s why the USS New Jersey was brought out of retirement again and again after World War II — and why it would still serve as a crucial asset if the need arose.

“If we got into another first-class shooting war, there’s a strong chance that they would fire me and bring the ship back,” Szimanski said. “There isn’t a replacement.”